Islam is a religion of peace and tolerance. Through promotion of free debate on our website, New Age Islam encourages people to rethink Islam.

Monday, January 21, 2019

Rahaf Mohammed’s Case Brings the Issue of Apostasy in Islam to Spotlight

By Arshad Alam, New Age Islam

14 January 2019

Rahaf al-Qunun, whose Twitter posts for
help captured global attention after she fled her family, gets asylum in
Canada.

Rahaf Mohammad al Qunun, a Saudi teenager,
has been permitted to stay in Canada after an international outcry supporting
her right to live with freedom and dignity. She fled from her Saudi family whom
she accuses as being ultra conservative. She was even punished for shortening
her hair by confining her to her room for months.

There are reports that her ordeal began
when she decided to renounce Islam. And that perhaps is the crux of the
problem. Islam has a special problem with apostasy and in the case of Rahaf has
brought it into spotlight once again.

For
now, Rahaf is safe and most probably will be granted a safe passage to a
country which she chooses to stay.

However, we need to be wary of the long arm
of the Saudi state. The state has been known to kidnap its ‘problematic’
citizens residing in other countries and bring them back to Saudi Arabia. Worse
still, there have been reports that its hit squads have targeted dissidents
even on foreign territory. A large part of this effort is because the Saudi
state fails to differentiate between criticism and treason. Anything remotely critical
of Islam or even the monarchy automatically becomes treason. As long as this
convoluted thinking remains part of the Saudi establishment, Rahaf Mohammed,
and many others like her, would never be safe.

The problem of apostasy is common to all
the three Semitic religions. Theologically, all three of them decree that the
apostate must be put to death. However, we must differentiate between the
reasons for apostasy within Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Within Judaism the
apostate is punished for reverting to the ‘old ways’. Thus going back to idol
worship and turning ones back to one God makes one apostate. Within
Christianity, the apostate is killed for turning his back on Christ. The
argument is that once you have embraced monotheism, you cannot go back to the
so called pagan ways of old. Exiting the community is punishable by death since
the assumption here that monotheism is the absolute standard of religious truth
and once a person has embraced it, he or she cannot be expected to deviate from
it. Every other form of relating to and conceptualizing God becomes a falsity;
something which is deeply problematic in all these three religions. Perhaps all
monotheistic traditions are premised on this innate intolerance of other
religious traditions.

With Islam the problem of apostasy becomes
more complicated. One becomes an apostate not just by renouncing or criticizing
God but all its attendant manifestations like the prophetic mission, the holy
book and even casting aspersions on the religious traditions. This means that
Islam itself, in all its manifestation cannot be critiqued without the danger
of committing apostasy.

This was very nearly the situation in
medieval Europe when the Church was tasked upon to inquire into charges of
apostasy. Over the years though, the church was able to reform itself and
therefore today in large parts of Christendom, the notion of apostasy itself
has become obsolete. Although there is no sanctioned church in Islam, the fear
of apostasy is perhaps much more in this tradition even today. Since there is
no intermediary between God and man in Islam, every believing Muslim thinks it
is her or his religious duty to safeguard the religion from imaginary assaults
more so when the attack or critique is from inside the tradition. Not just
mullahs, but there are groups dedicated to detect even the slightest hint of
apostasy within the Muslim society.

They openly proclaim that the punishment
for such experimentation with the Islamic tradition is death and mostly get
away with it. It doesn’t really matter to them that the Quran prescribes no
punishment for the alleged blasphemer. There is almost a settled consensus that
the punishment for apostasy in Islam is death.

The dominant interpretation of Islam is
that it is a cradle to the grave arrangement. Almost every aspect of a Muslim’s
life is supposed to be governed by Islamic tenets defined the Sharia. This
makes the possibility of effecting reform within Islam and Muslim societies an
almost impossible task.

Critiquing any aspect of the faith which has
any bearing on the social conduct of Muslims can automatically be treated as an
act of apostasy. It is not surprising therefore that the charge of blasphemy
and apostasy has ranged from calling a teddy bear Mohammad to spitting on the wall
of the mosque to practicing yoga. Under the circumstances, there have been
reformists within Muslim societies who have been killed just for saying some
very obvious things regarding the social condition of Muslims. The case of the
Egyptian Farage Fouda comes readily to mind. Fouda, through his writings, was
campaigning for a separation of religion and politics within his native
country. The al-Azhar issued a fatwa against him and declared him an apostate
following which he was killed by a group of Muslims who thought they were
carrying out the command of Allah. Similar has been the fate of many a writers
in Bangladesh who have paid with their life to talk about very basic freedoms
in their society.

It is therefore imperative that Muslims
must have a frank and open conversation about the problem of apostasy within
their societies. If Muslims go on killing everyone who is critical of their
religion or any aspect of it, then it is Muslim society itself which will be
the biggest loser. After all, any society, which bars the free expression of
critique, regresses socially, politically and culturally. And perhaps such an
intolerant attitude towards critique, both internal and external, is the prime
reason for the decadent nature of contemporary Muslim societies.